Philhellenism and Orientalism in Germany Suzanne Marchand
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Pious and Critical Scholarly Paradigms of the Pentateuch •Fl
Author Biography Spencer is a third year History major from Martinez, California. In addition, he is perusing a minor in Religious Studies. His major research interests involve the study of the Old and New Testament, as well as military history. After graduation, he hopes to take his passion and research to seminary, where he can further his study of the field and history of Biblical criticism. Morgan Pious and Critical Scholarly Paradigms of the Pentateuch — during the 19th & early 20th centuries by Spencer Morgan Abstract This paper examines the antithesis between Christian scholarship and modern higher criticism of the Pentateuch during the 19th and early 20th centuries. During the 19th century, the popularization and eventual hegemony of the Doc- umentary Hypothesis revolutionized the field of Biblical studies. Modern criti- cal scholars claimed that Moses did not write the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) during the 15th century BC, but rather it was the product of a later redaction of at least four separate documents: J, E, P, and D. Writing hundreds of years apart and long after Moses, their authors reflect not the ancient covenantal religion of Moses, but rather various periods in the evolution of Israel’s religion. The implications of the Documentary Hypothe- sis bring into question the historicity and theological validity of not only the Pen- tateuch, but also the Christian New Testament which presupposes it. The goal of this research is to identify the foundational presuppositions, conclusions, and contextual consciousness that both the modern critics and the Reformed body of Christian scholars opposing them brought to their scholarship. -
William Robertson Smith, Solomon Schechter and Contemporary Judaism
https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.jhs.2016v48.026 William Robertson Smith, Solomon Schechter and contemporary Judaism bernhard maier University of Tübingen, Germany* During Solomon Schechter’s first years in the University of Cambridge, one of his most illustrious colleagues was the Scottish Old Testament scholar and Arabist William Robertson Smith (1846–1894), who is today considered to be among the founding fathers of comparative religious studies. Smith was the son of a minister of the strongly evangelical Free Church of Scotland, which had constituted itself in 1843 as a rival to the state-controlled established Church of Scotland. Appointed Professor of Old Testament Exegesis in the Free Church College Aberdeen at the early age of twenty-four, Smith soon came into conflict with the conservative theologians of his church on account of his critical views. After a prolonged heresy trial, he was finally deprived of his Aberdeen chair in 1881. In 1883 he moved to Cambridge, where he served, successively, as Lord Almoner’s Reader in Arabic, University Librarian, and Thomas Adams’s Professor of Arabic. Discussing Schechter’s relations with Robertson Smith, one has to bear in mind that direct contact between Schechter and Smith was confined to a relatively short period of less than five years (1890–94), during which Smith was frequently ill and consequently not resident in Cambridge at all.1 Furthermore, there is not much written evidence, so that several hints and clues that have come down to us are difficult to interpret, our understanding being sometimes based on inference and reasoning by analogy rather than on any certain knowledge. -
Prophets Postcolonially Initial Insights for a Postcolonial Reading of Prophetic Literature
ARTICLES PROPHETS POSTCOLONIALLY INITIAL INSIGHTS FOR A POSTCOLONIAL READING OF PROPHETIC LITERATURE Steed Vernyl Davidson Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary / Graduate Theological Union This article examines the conception of the genre prophetic literature and how a postcolonial examination probes its production. A postcolonial engagement can offer more than simply anticolonial resistance dis- course as can be gleaned from the theo-political contexts of prophetic material. Drawing on Homi Bhabha’s reflection on ‘the book’, other postcolonial theorists, as well as genre theory, the article traces elements that constitute a ‘prophetic book’ and interrogates the power of the canonical category ‘prophetic literature’. In the end it offers three defining features of a postcolonially resituated reading of prophetic literature. The relationship between Biblical Studies and Postcolonial Studies rests on the presumption that at multiple levels the Bible exists as a product of empire. This presumption readily leads to the application of postcolonial theory to the reading of biblical texts without a preliminary interrog- ation of the literature that constitutes the body of texts called ‘Bible.’ While biblical critics pay attention to the socio-cultural milieus that generate major portions of the Bible such as Greco- Roman society (Moore 2006; Carter 2001; Liew 1999), classification of biblical material into prophetic literature, gospel, apocalypse, and so on remain unexamined from a postcolonial per- spective. Since the synchronic/diachronic option that the general field of Biblical Studies insists on may be a false choice for most postcolonial biblical scholars, users of postcolonial theory in relation to the Bible tend to probe the Bible as literature from the perspective of what Homi Bhabha regards as ‘the edict of Englishness and the assault of the dark unruly spaces of the earth’ (Bhabha 1994, 107; Sugirtharajah 2005, 2003, 2002, 2001; Boer 2008). -
The Theological Development of the Young Robertson Smith by Donald R
81 The Theological Development of the Young Robertson Smith by Donald R. Nelson Dr. Nelson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities at Michigan State University, was awarded his doctorate by that university in 1969 for a thesis on "The Life and Thought of William Robertson Smith, 1846-1894". Here he studies the early influences on Robertson Smith's thought, and finds that these included deter minant philosophical influences as well as those of philological and historical study. RITING in 1889 of the impact of theories of higher criticism upon W the Christian's understanding of the Old Testament, Mary Augusta Ward interpreted "the present collapse of English orthodoxy" as resulting from "one cause only-the invasion ofEnglish by German thought."l Though doubtless there were believers who contested her assessment of the state of the Faith, few would have contradicted her notion that in recent decades British religious insularity had been breached by a theological barrage of Teutonic origin. The publication in 1860 of an incendiary little volume titled Essays and Reviews was a clear warning that the Channel no longer provided protection against "German rationalism." The chief intention of its seven Anglican contributors was to "break down the conspiracy of silence" that they felt had kept otherwise educated people in ignorance of the revolutionary developments that had long before occurred in German theology and biblical study.2 Essays and Reviews, its non-committal title notwithstanding, sparked two ecclesiastical trials and a literary battle of considerable magnitude. When in the eighteen-seventies and eighties the German "historical consciousness" first made its way to Great Britain on a scale sig nificant enough to warrant Mrs. -
Wellhausen, Julius (1844-1918)
Das wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet (WiBiLex) Wellhausen, Julius (1844-1918) Meik Gerhards erstellt: Mai 2018 Permanenter Link zum Artikel: http://www.bibelwissenschaft.de/stichwort/34720/ Wellhausen, Julius Meik Gerhards Julius Wellhausen gilt als „Bahnbrecher in drei Disziplinen“ (Smend 2006): der Alttestamentlichen und der Neutestamentlichen Wissenschaft sowie der Arabistik. Der Artikel widmet sich Wellhausens Werk als Alttestamentler (vgl. dazu auch Kraus, 255-274; Graf Reventlow, 302-316; Smend 2013b, 436-453; kürzer: Perlitt 2. Au. 1967; Spieckermann; Smend 2006, 16-26; Kratz 2015a, 71-77; 2015b). Seine bedeutendste Leistung auf diesem Gebiet liegt in der Erarbeitung eines neuen Bildes der Geschichte Israels, das ältere Ansätze der Forschung aufnehmend auf der Abb. 1 Julius Wellhausen. Spätdatierung der Gesetzescorpora des Pentateuchs beruht. Das betrit neben dem → Deuteronomium auch die bis dahin üblicherweise früh datierten priesterlichen Gesetze (→ Pentateuchforschung). Wellhausen zeigt auf, dass das kanonische Bild der Geschichte Israels von exilischen Bearbeitungen im Geist des Deuteronomiums geprägt ist (so im Hexateuch und in Richter bis 2Könige; → Deuteronomismus) oder in nachexilischen Neufassungen im Geist der → Priesterschrift vorliegt (→ Chronikbücher). Trägt man entsprechende Überarbeitungen ab, zeigt die ältere Geschichtsschreibung und Prophetie, dass Israel bis in spätvorexilische Zeit keine schriftliche Gesetzesgrundlage hatte und weder → Monotheismus noch Kultuszentralisation (→ Josia) kannte. Wellhausens Rekonstruktion der Literargeschichte und der politisch-religiösen Geschichte Israels konnte eine Fülle von Spannungen in den Texten erklären und auösen und wurde so zu einem bis heute prägenden Meilenstein der Forschung. Der Artikel stellt auch die Frage nach dem theologischen Ansatz, der Wellhausens historische Arbeiten bestimmt. Die Frage hängt mit dem „ersten großen Problem einer Wellhausen- Biographie“ (Jepsen, 261) zusammen: den Gründen seines Wechsels von der Theologischen in die Philosophische Fakultät. -
Authorship of the Pentateuch
M. Bajić: Authorship of the Pentateuch Authorship of the Pentateuch Monika Bajić Biblijski institut, Zagreb [email protected] UDK:27-242 Professional paper Received: April, 2016 Accepted: October, 2016 Summary This piece is a concise summary of the historical and contemporary develo- pment of Pentateuch studies in Old Testament Theology. This article aims to provide information on the possible confirmation of Mosaic authorship. The purpose is to examine how the Documentary Hypothesis, Fragment and Su- pplemental Hypotheses, Form and Traditio-Historical Criticism, Canonical and Literary Criticism have helped to reveal or identify the identity of the author of the Torah. To better understand the mentioned hypotheses, this article presents a brief description of the J, E, D, and P sources. Key words: Pentateuch, authorship, Mosaic authorship, Torah, Documen- tary Hypothesis, Fragment and Supplemental Hypothesis, Form and Tradi- tio-Historical Criticism, Canonical and Literary Criticism. In the most literal sense, the Pentateuch 1 (or Torah) is an anonymous work, but traditional views support the belief of Mosaic authorship (Carpenter 1986, 751- 52). Yet, with the advent of humanism and the Renaissance, the sense of intellec- tual freedom and upswing in research have led to the fact that many have begun to read the Bible critically, trying to challenge its text as well as the traditions and beliefs that are formed from it (Alexander 2003, 61-63). One of the most commonly attacked beliefs is Moses’ authorship of the Torah. There has been an 1 Taken from the Greek translation LXX. Pentateuch is derived from the Greek word pentateu- chos, which means a five-book work, known as the Books of Moses (Carpenter 1986). -
Julius Wellhausen, Anti-Judaism, and Hebrew Bible Scholarship
religions Article Unapologetic Apologetics: Julius Wellhausen, Anti-Judaism, and Hebrew Bible Scholarship Stacy Davis Department of Religious Studies and Theology Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA; [email protected] Abstract: Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) is in many ways the ancestor of modern Hebrew Bible scholarship. His Prolegomena to the History of Israel condensed decades of source critical work on the Torah into a documentary hypothesis that is still taught today in almost all Hebrew Bible courses in some form. What is not taught as frequently is the anti-Judaism that underpins his hypothesis. This is in part due to unapologetic apologetics regarding Wellhausen’s bias, combined with the insistence that a nineteenth-century scholar cannot be judged by twenty-first century standards. These calls for compassion are made exclusively by white male scholars, leaving Jewish scholars the solitary task of pointing out Wellhausen’s clear anti-Judaism. In a discipline that is already overwhelmingly white, male and Christian, the minimizing of Wellhausen’s racism suggests two things. First, those who may criticize contextual biblical studies done by women and scholars of color have no problem pleading for a contextual understanding of Wellhausen while downplaying the growing anti-Judaism and nationalism that was a part of nineteenth-century Germany. Second, recent calls for inclusion in the Society of Biblical Literature may be well intentioned but ultimately useless if the guild cannot simply call one of its most brilliant founders the biased man that he was. Keywords: Wellhausen; anti-Judaism; historical context Citation: Davis, Stacy. 2021. Unapologetic Apologetics: Julius Wellhausen, Anti-Judaism, and Hebrew Bible Scholarship. -
The Philological Apparatus: Science, Text, and Nation in the Nineteenth Century,’ Critical Inquiry 47, No
NOTE: This item is the archived peer-reviewed author-version of Paul Michael Kurtz, ‘The Philological Apparatus: Science, Text, and Nation in the Nineteenth Century,’ Critical Inquiry 47, no. 4 (2021): 747– 76. The Philological Apparatus: Science, Text, and Nation in the Nineteenth Century Paul Michael Kurtz* Abstract Philology haunts the humanities, through both its defendants and its detractors. This article examines the construction of philology as the premier science of the long nineteenth century in Europe. It aims to bring the history of philology up to date by taking it seriously as a science and giving it the kind of treatment that has dominated the history of science for the last generation: to reveal how practices, instruments, and cooperation create illusions of timeless knowledge. This historical inquiry therefore asks how one modality of text interpretation could morph into an integrated complex of knowledge production, which ostensibly explained the whole human world. Ultimately, it advances a central argument: philology operated as a relational system, one that concealed diversity and disunity, projected unity and stability, and seemed to rise above the material conditions of its own making. The essay scrutinizes the composition of philology as a heterogeneous ensemble, the functioning of philology comparable to other sciences, whether human or natural, and the historical contingency in the consolidation of philology. * For critical engagement, I am indebted to Ankur Barua, Marieke Dhont, Simon Goldhill, Nathan MacDonald, Harald Samuel, Emiliano Urciuoli, and Rebecca Van Hove—but Bernard Geoghegan most of all. Valuable suggestions also came from the editorial board of CI. Earlier drafts of this essay were workshopped at “Biblical Scholarship and Theology in the Nineteenth Century,” a seminar hosted in CRASSH at the University of Cambridge, and at “Discipline Formation in the Modern Human Sciences,” a colloquium organized by the Sarton Centre for History of Science at Ghent University. -
GENESIS in the PENTATEUCH Konrad Schmid I in the Heyday of the Documentary Hypothesis It Was a Common Assumption That Most Texts
GENESIS IN THE PENTATEUCH Konrad Schmid Introduction In the heyday of the Documentary Hypothesis it was a common assumption that most texts in Genesis were to be interpreted as elements of narra- tive threads that extended beyond the book of Genesis and at least had a pentateuchal or hexateuchal scope (J, E, and P). To a certain degree, exe- gesis of the book of Genesis was therefore tantamount to exegesis of the book of Genesis in the Pentateuch or Hexateuch. The Theologische Realen- zyklopädie, one of the major lexica in the German-speaking realm, has for example no entry for “Genesis” but only for the “Pentateuch” and its alleged sources. At the same time, it was also recognized that the material—oral or written—which was processed and reworked by the authors of the sources J, E, and P originated within a more modest narrative perspective that was limited to the single stories or story cycles, a view emphasized especially by Julius Wellhausen, Hermann Gunkel, Kurt Galling, and Martin Noth:1 J and E were not authors, but collectors.2 Gunkel even went a step further: “‘J’ and ‘E’ are not individual writers, but schools of narrators.”3 But with the successful reception of Gerhard von Rad’s 1938 hypothesis of a tradi- tional matrix now accessible through the “historical creeds” like Deut 26:5– 9, which was assumed to have also been the intellectual background of the older oral material, biblical scholarship began to lose sight of the view taken by Wellhausen, Gunkel, Galling, and Noth. In addition, von Rad saw J and 1 Julius Wellhausen, Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments (3rd ed.; Berlin: Reimer, 1899); Hermann Gunkel, Genesis (6th ed.; HKAT 1/1; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964 [repr. -
A Farewell to the Yahwist? the Composition of the Pentateuch In
A FAREWELL TO THE YAHWIST? The Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation Edited by Thomas B. Dozeman and Konrad Schmid Society of Biblical Literature Atlanta CONTENTS Abbreviations ...............................................................................................vii Introduction Thomas B. Dozeman and Konrad Schmid..................................................1 Part 1: Main Papers The Elusive Yahwist: A Short History of Research Thomas Christian Römer ..........................................................................9 The So-Called Yahwist and the Literary Gap between Genesis and Exodus Konrad Schmid .......................................................................................29 The Jacob Story and the Beginning of the Formation of the Pentateuch Albert de Pury ........................................................................................51 The Transition between the Books of Genesis and Exodus Jan Christian Gertz ................................................................................73 The Literary Connection between the Books of Genesis and Exodus and the End of the Book of Joshua Erhard Blum ..........................................................................................89 The Commission of Moses and the Book of Genesis Thomas B. Dozeman ............................................................................107 Part 2: Responses The Yahwist and the Redactional Link between Genesis and Exodus Christoph Levin ....................................................................................131 -
Table of Contents
Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Scholarly Origins of JE 11 Hermann Hupfeld 13 Karl Heinrich Graf 19 Abraham Kuenen 24 Julius Wellhausen 27 August Dillmann 37 Eduard Riehm 40 Conclusion 43 Chapter Two: JE and the Documentary Hypothesis in the Twentieth Century 45 Hermann Gunkel 46 Gerhard von Rad and Martin Noth 48 Rudolf Smend, Otto Eissfeldt, et al 51 Paul Volz and Wilhelm Rudolph 54 Rolf Rendtorff, et al 60 Brevard Childs 78 John Van Seters 85 Richard E. Friedman 94 Conclusion 97 Chapter Three: The Relationship of D to J and E 99 Deut 1:9-18: Appointing of judges 106 Deut 1:19-45: The spies 114 Deut 2:2-3:11: Edom, Sihon, and Og 130 Deut 3:12-20: Apportioning the Transjordan 141 Deut 4:10-14; 5:2-5, 19-28; 9:8-21, 25-10:5: Horeb 153 Deut 8:15-16: Testing in the wilderness 172 Deut 9:22-24: Additional examples of disobedience in the wilderness 173 Deut 10:6-9: Travel and the Lévites 179 Bibliografische Informationen digitalisiert durch http://d-nb.info/992561043 X Table of Contents Deut 1 l:2b-6: The acts of YHWH 181 Deut 23:4-6: Ammonites, Moabites, and Balaam 184 Deut 25:17-19: Amalek 184 Deut 31:1-8: The authority of Joshua 185 Conclusion 188 Excursus: The Relationship of P to JE 197 Chapter Four: RJE - The Reliance on the Redactor 209 Factual Discrepancies 211 Genesis 16:8-10 211 Genesis 21:32, 34 and 26:15, 18 213 Exodus 4:13-16, et al 218 Exodus 34:1, 4 221 Exodus 32-34 223 Terminological Overlap 225 Genesis 20:18 228 Genesis 28:21 230 Genesis 31:3 232 Exodus 3:7 234 Secondary Additions 236 Exodus 3:14, 15* 237 -
The Biblical Account of Origins
Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 14/1 (Spring 2003): 4–43. Article copyright © 2003 by Richard M. Davidson. The Biblical Account of Origins Richard M. Davidson Andrews University Introduction The basic elements in the biblical account of origins are summarized in the opening verse of the Bible, Gen 1:1: I. ÒIn the beginningÓÑthe ÒwhenÓ of origins; II. ÒGodÓÑthe ÒWhoÓ of origins; III. ÒcreatedÓÑthe ÒhowÓ of origins; IV. Òthe heavens and the earthÓÑthe ÒwhatÓ of origins. In this paper we will take up each of these elements in turn, with special emphasis upon the ÒwhenÓ1 and aspects of the other elements that impinge upon the relationship between Scripture and science. I. The ÒWhenÓ: ÒIn the BeginningÓ In discussing the ÒwhenÓ of creation, a number of questions arise for which an answer may be sought in the biblical text. Does Gen 1Ð2 describe an absolute or relative beginning? Does the Genesis account intend to present a literal, his- torical portrayal of origins, or is some kind of non-literal interpretation implied in the text? Does the biblical text of Gen 1 describe a single creation event (en- compassed within the creation week), or is there a prior creation described in Gen 1:1, with some kind of gap implied between the description of Gen 1:1 and 1 This emphasis upon the ÒwhenÓ of creation is in stark contrast with that of, e.g., Raymond F. Cottrell, ÒInspiration and Authority of the Bible in Relation to Phenomena of the Natural World,Ó in Creation Reconsidered: Scientific, Biblical, and Theological Perspectives, ed.